I write and read a lot about creative ways to save and invest money, but what can happen when we take some of that ingenuity and turn it into a charity hacking engine? Can we take a little and make a lot? Can a small amount of money make a difference?
I think this point was already proven when a lot of $20 gift cards made a huge difference in peoples lives, but I wanted to go back into this arena for a few reasons:
- Somone on Twitter took a shot at me for not being “grateful” after I published my “Is my F.U. Fund ruining my work ethic” post
- We have done a lot of good over the last few months and I want to share that you CAN make a difference without thousands of dollars.
I am not going to lie, that twitter moment pissed me off………..But I had a rare mature moment. Decided to let it pass and instead speak with some action.
Before I get into the charity hacks, I want to highlight something about the people I know in the FI community.
Our Financial Position doesn’t mean we lack empathy for people that are struggling. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, it is the complete opposite. Many of the people pursuing Financial Independence are aiming to retire early to help more people. Not to mention they use their platforms to change the lives of thousands of people.
A few examples (there are 1000s more, this is just what I could get my hands on with little notice)
- Giving with Impact on a Small Budget – Montana Money Adventures
- Giving Thanks with a $100,000.00 Donation – Physician on Fire
- Amazon Associates! Free money for your favorite charity when you add Smile to your affiliate account! – Early Retirement Dude (Nice hack!)
- Hurricanes in H-Town, Eid, and Sacrifice – Rouge Dad, MD
- Go Beyond Gratitude // With Great Wealth Comes Great Responsibility – Our Next Life
- You Don’t Have to Give, But You Absolutely Should – Picks Up Pennies
- Poverty, Water, Animals: On Charity and the Why – A Gai Shan Life
Lots of good being done!
I also want to say that it is OK to talk about our accomplishments and the options they give us. We don’t do it to make people feel bad. I show it for two reasons, proof that a pretty normal family can do it and I get motivated seeing other people’s success stories. I am grateful for the position we are in, but I am also proud of the decisions and work that made it possible.
Onto the Charitable Hacking!
Coupon Hacking for Charity
Holy crap did the coupons and samples come flying in when Little AE was born. It seemed like every other day there would be a package on our doorstep or a stack of $5 coupons in the mail. We don’t even know how we got on the mailing lists.
We were fortunate to not need the formula for our daughter, but it seemed like a waste to chuck all the savings into the trash. The stack was mostly $5 off with a few $15 off mixed in with no minimum purchase. Basically cash as long as we could cover the full price difference.
For the next month every time we hit the grocery store or Target we would leave with 4 jugs of formula (spending $2-3 out of pocket on each) and picked up 4 canisters (spending about $10 out of pocket on each)
In total, we had 16 jugs and 6 canisters (2 were full sized samples) of formula worth around $275 that we spent under $80 on. We boxed it all up along with some gifts that we never opened for Little AE and dropped it off at a local Women’s Shelter.
I don’t know if coupon hacking for charity is a thing, but this worked really well.
Charity Event for Friends and Family
This one was all Mrs. AE – she is a much better person than I am 🙂
She organized a huge 30 team Charity Bean Bag Tournament for our friends and family.
Details:
- We paid for food out of pocket (BYOB)
- We setup all the games and the brackets
- $40 entry fee per team
- Setup a Raffle after the tournament was over
For the raffle, we called local stores and restaurants and had a pretty high success rate getting gift cards or baskets to raffle off. We also reached out to the charities themselves and they sent over a bunch of T-Shirts and Stickers to raffle off and sell at the event.
We raised over $1,100 dollars for two local animal shelters while having a blast with family and friends. Great return on a $120 investment.
Take advantage of company matches
Not the normal 401K advice (please follow that though)
Our employer rolled out a new program this year that will match up to $750 in charitable giving per employee to ANY charity you want. If you don’t want to pay out of pocket, they will donate $25/hr for every volunteer hour.
We are doing a combo of cash donations and volunteering to get our full match for 2017. $400 cash each, and $350 worth of employer matches for volunteer hours.
What bums me out is the lack of effort by my co-workers, I am prodding them to get the full match by EOY but very few are actually doing it. Sounds like a 401K match that often gets left behind.
Helping a New Mom
Mrs. AE is very active in a few local Facebook Mom Groups and offers/asks for advice when other new parents have questions. It is pretty nice to get immediate responses from other people in similar scenarios on our “Is this normal?” questions.
In the middle of summer, she saw a post from a Mom that was asking for tips on keeping her child cool in a second-floor apartment with no air conditioning. She explained that she could barely afford gas to get to the store, so purchasing a window unit was not possible.
Coincidentally we had one sitting, unused, in our garage. I would have sold it for $25 on Craigslist eventually, but Mrs. AE thought this was a better use.
Knowing she couldn’t afford gas, Mrs. AE asked for her address and drove it down to her apartment. She was so grateful to get a gift from a complete stranger, she thanked us multiple times and posted a huge thank you in the group chat.
It’s pretty awesome that a thing just sitting on our floor of our garage could give someone else peace of mind in a stressful situation. That feeling can’t be replicated by $25
The gesture spread to Mrs. AEs parents who happened to be staying with us to visit our daughter. Her Dad pulled out a $20 and taped it to the back as a little surprise her.
Have you tried anything similar?
I feel like a Personal Finance Ninja that mastered a new move! Taking some saving and investing principles and turning a little into a lot!
You could say we are fortunate or lucky to be in these 4 positions, but I bet if you put in a little effort looking there would be similar opportunities around you. Get to work!
I love doing this with coupons. I shop for the food bank every time I grocery shop. It keeps perspective in my life! We are also donating formula. And the samples and coupons…holy moly! Thanks for reminding us that we can and should all do more. The AC unit is the perfect example. What big hearts the AEs have!
Thank you, Penny! Glad we aren’t the only ones that got bombarded with savings after the baby! The boxes some of the formula companies sent are pretty impressive
Way to represent the community – kudos 🙂 The coupon thing I hadn’t even thought of but it’s a really great idea!
Thank you, Dave!
Way to spread the good fortune, AE!
The baby formula hack is brilliant. We did nothing with those coupons. We weren’t going to use it and didn’t have any friends at the time that could. Buying formula and donating it is awesome, but something most people won’t think to do. Even leaving them somewhere where they can be used by someone else is a nice little hack.
Cheers!
-PoF
Thanks PoF!
I’m glad we found a use for them, those companies target repeat business pretty hard. Glad we could take a little from each company and spread it around!
Hey–thanks for the mention. I’m surprised more people don’t set up Amazon Smile accounts on behalf of their nonprofits, especially schools. Picture a school with a thousand students in it, whose parents all use the school’s Amazon Smile gateway to do their shopping. Potentially a major source of funding, right?
I am going to set one up – I didn’t even know they existed and I love Amazon! Will spread the word!
Great post! We use Amazon Smile to donate to our local food bank where my wife volunteers. And company matches are amazing; I don’t know why more people don’t use them. Another way to get a “match” is to participate in charity walks and have friends and family sponsor you (if you’re not up to setting up your own event like Mrs. AE!). Finally, my wife donates blood regularly (I’m not able to), which is another financially friendly way to give.
Thank you, Gary
I will continue to be bummed until all my peers get the full match from our company, doubling money or paying $25 to volunteer…..what a waste
This is so awesome!! I love it! It is frustrating that the PF community gets bad response because of the general frugality of everyone. But frugal doesn’t mean cheap (or have to at least). I do think most of us are working towards FI with the intention of being in a better position to make a difference in the people around us. We want to do missions, and while we do them now, we will be more available when that time comes.
A frugal hack we have just started actually has turned into a mission of sorts. Throughout the course of having our kids, we’ve collected tons of clothes. I was originally going to just give them to Goodwill. But now, we are making up totes for children placed in foster care, so they have things to call their own. It helps both the children feel more comfortable and the foster parents with some of the expense from fostering. I don’t share this to brag, but to show that there are opportunities for all people in all stages of life. Just being open to the chance to help others, that’s what makes a difference.
Just like Mrs. AE was open to the other moms, we can all be open to the opportunities and needs for those around us and see how we can share what we already have.
That is a great use of old clothes/baby items. We might have to steal that one – I like giving directly to the people that need it, makes it a lot more personal.
100% agree on the first repsonse from people when it comes to money, at its surface FIRE does look a bit selfish (even though it isn’t considering you are using your earned money to its fullest potential) but the back stories of what people want to do after they reach it are amazing.
Appreciate the comment!
Thank you!!! We have a ton of baby clothes we want to donate but every charity we find requires the clothes to be *NEW*. It was starting to get frustrating.
We’ll start looking for foster care programs.
Mr AE, will let you know if there’s anything in the area if we find it.
Thank you!
I was actually pretty shocked when I realized how hard it was to find a shelter that was open more than a few hours/more than 3 days a week. It took us awhile to get the donation over them because of it.
Thanks for the link!
I always look out for a way to use our employer charity match because even if we can’t give much, double of not too much is better than nothing! I sure do wish we had the volunteering-match option, though, that sounds fantastic.
You are welcome!
It is a great deal for people who don’t want to pay out of pocket and still get some cash in the hands of a charity. I hope it spreads! Great program.
LOVE this! At my last employer, I was able to form a committee and sponsor a charity. It was a women and children’s’ shelter. Throughout the year I organized different events like food drives, school supplies drives, holiday gifts, etc. and we also did service projects at their shelter. My employer would match donations.
One thing I do occasionally is to donate credit card reward dollars to charity. The card company will run a campaign and match funds donated that way. Oh and Amazon Smiles too.
Nice job Mr & Mrs. AE!
Thanks, Amy!
That is an awesome program and I am glad to hear there are a lot of employers doing the match. Makes a huge difference
Thanks for including me! I agree that there are lots of ways to give back. 🙂 Most of the time it just takes a bit if thought and intention. Often frugality and generosity go hand in hand. When we are mindful with our money, we have some left over to share!
Love these hacks, very creative! Hadn’t thought to do that with unused coupons, definitely going to keep my eye out for the opportunity to do that. My employer matches charitable donations as well, this post gave me the push to turn that paperwork in to utilize it.
I’m at 2% battery but you had me digging for my charger so I could read this post clearly.
You’re a lot more mature than me Satan. If anyone tries to guilt me what to do with my money, it’s an invite to a drop kicking.
I’ve been poor before. People evangelize the poor sometimes. Some of my ghetto classmates didn’t move up because they were idiots, plain and simple. $600 Nikes but couldn’t turn in homework because they didn’t have a printer? People are people. Just like wealthy people can be snobs and idiots all the same.
Anyways, I’m off topic, I found out the other day via Grant’s (lifeprepcouple) that you could donate breast milk to charity. That’s a wonderful idea too! Boobies for babies if I was authorized to name it. I use to collect those 10 cent box tops for school. Everyone throws those away when they’re perfectly good ways to donate.
I love these ideas, especially the baby formula coupon idea! Thank you for the inspiration and the great tips!